WAUSAU, WI (WTAQ) - If you're convicted of drunk driving in another state, and Wisconsin authorities don't catch it, you do not have to confess to it.
That's what a state appeals court ruled, when it threw out a criminal OWI case against 38-year-old Benjamin Strohman of Suamico.
He was convicted of driving drunk in Illinois in 1999. But when he was arrested in Green Bay for OWI in 2005, a municipal court treated him as a first offender. He pleaded no contest and paid a fine.
In 2013, Strohman tried getting the municipal conviction dropped, saying he should have been charged with a second offense instead. The conviction was vacated, but he was later charged with 2 criminal misdemeanors for second-time OWI.
Strohman said the charges were not valid, because a three-year statute-of-limitations had long expired from his 2005 case. But a judge didn't buy it, siding with prosecutors who said Strohman had an obligation to tell the municipal court about his Illinois conviction -- and that took the statute-of-limitations clock back to the beginning.
The 3rd District Appellate Court in Wausau disagreed, saying Strohman was under no obligation to come clean about any offenses the state didn't know about. That dismissal could help him in a pending case in Portage County, where Strohman was charged January 16th with third-time OWI.
He's due in court for that February 16th. He could face a lesser penalty now that one of his two convictions is wiped out.
(Story courtesy of Wheeler News Service)